


light

by kythen



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Crushes, M/M, POV Second Person, feelings with feelings, kuroo being dense and in denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 08:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6110343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study of a crush, as seen through the eyes of one Kuroo Tetsurou.</p>
            </blockquote>





	light

By chance, you meet Sawamura Daichi again in university.

It's his back you see first, something strangely familiar in the sea of unfamiliar people flooding into the lecture hall. In all honesty, Sawamura Daichi is unremarkable. He's plain, subtle, unlike the other startlingly eye-catching members of the Karasuno volleyball club. With looks like his, brown eyes and black hair, he is easy to lose in a crowd and fade away in a memory, remembered only as "Karasuno's captain", nothing less, nothing more.

But you don't forget. When you reach out to tap at his shoulder and he turns, he's exactly as you remember him, eyes wide in his face as he looks back at you. A smile spreads across his face, friendly, just a faint hint of amusement in the quirk of his lips.

"Kuroo?"

He remembers you too.

\---

Sawamura Daichi and you become friends, something neither of you had the chance to be back in high school.

But it's university so that doesn't mean you get to see each other all the time. For starters, Sawamura and you are in different majors, which makes coordinating lunch breaks so much more difficult. The only saving grace is that you share a class with him, and a volleyball court.

Bokuto had once described volleyball as something like a "birthright" and you can see that in the swing of his arm and the arch of his back as he leaps for a spike. To you, it's something more like a "chance". The chance to try new things, to drag Kenma out of the hole he was trying to crawl into and give him a place to find himself, a chance to fly.

This time, chance brings Sawamura to you.

The ball spins easy between your hands before you toss it up for a serve. You aim as far away from Sawamura as you can, but he still gets it anyway, the impact of your serve dulled against the solid net of his arms.

"Nice serve, Kuroo. I think I almost felt that," Sawamura calls from across the court.

After years of taunting people, it's almost strange to be on the receiving side, and you grin in appreciation at Sawamura's jab. He tosses the ball up in the air, stretching an arm up before bringing it down hard on the ball.

Later, the same arm nudges you away from his bowl of ramen when the both of you are huddled together in an outside stall between school and your student apartments. You're done with your food and Sawamura isn't so the only logical course of action from there is to steal his. Sawamura is adamant about this, somehow managing to fend you off with one hand while he gulps down his food with his other.

Much later, you walk down the street to your apartments together under the lamplights and you watch the way Sawamura blinks like he can't quite keep his eyes open. It's still a distance to your destination and you poke an elbow into his side, trying to distract him from a day of mental and physical fatigue.

"Hey, Sawamura. Did you do your readings for tomorrow's class?"

"Half of it," he says. "I was going to read the rest of it tonight."

"Half's good enough," you tell him. "I bet you're just going to crash once you get back."

You expect indignation or something along those lines in his next reply, but what you get instead is a quiet huff of laughter as he admits, "Yeah, I probably am."

It might just be your imagination, but you think Sawamura walks a bit closer to you in the next few steps, his arm brushing against yours, even though the night is hot and the both of you are still kind of gross from volleyball practice.

You don't mind though.

\---

It starts off as just a feeling, something small nagging at the back of your mind when you look at Sawamura. You think too much about Sawamura lately, but it's hard not to when he's become something of a permanent fixture in your life.

He's laughing now as he comes through your front door and just sort of stops there after he catches sight of you bundled under your kotatsu like it's the only thing keeping you alive in this weather. And it is, you insist, but it only makes Sawamura laugh harder.

There's something about the way he laughs that makes you want to smile because it's like catching him off guard, something unexpected like finding a warm patch of sunlight in the dead of winter. He's been laughing a lot around you lately, mostly at you in fact, and by right you should take offence at that. But you can't, not when there's nothing mean about his laughter and he just looks so happy it's almost as if he's glowing.

"Sawamura, that's enough," you say anyway because he's been standing in your doorway for a good minute now and even if he isn't cold you are, even under all your protective layers of thermal. "Shut the door before the cold gets in."

"So is this what you've been up to while I've been away? Turning into a blanket monster?" There is a grin wide on Sawamura's face even as he moves to do as he's been told.

"You try moving around in this weather," you retort, rolling onto your side to stare him down.

Lethargy makes your movements slow and by the time you've turned towards Sawamura, he's gone. You hear his footsteps lead into the kitchen, a familiar sound, one that you've gotten used to hearing ever since you moved in and Sawamura started coming over every other day.

"I did. That's why I'm here now, aren't I?"

Sawamura returns, slipping his legs under the kotatsu. He rests them on the part of you that's hiding under the kotatsu as if you're a glorified footrest and you think about kicking up a tiny fuss just because. But it's too much of a hassle and you end up squirming away to make room for his legs.

"How was Miyagi?" you ask.

"Cold," Sawamura reports, leaning his elbows on the table with mirth in his eyes. "You would have hated it."

"Thank goodness I live here."

"It's not that bad."

"Not everyone is blessed with the solid constitution you are, Sawamura. Some of us actually feel the cold when it's cold."

Sawamura's feet find you again, his heels digging into your ribs in a way that's most definitely deliberate. Your hands come up instinctively, catching around the arch of his feet and wrestling them away from you. But Sawamura is relentless, pulling his legs out of your grasp, and that is when you resort to drastic measures.

You catch Sawamura's ankles in both hands, hold them to the floor, and flop yourself over his legs. With your entire weight on his legs, he can't pull away as easily. It's your victory.

"You're cutting off my blood circulation," Sawamura complains, his leg muscles tensing under your stomach.

"Too bad."

He tries to move again, but as strong as Sawamura is, it's his legs against all seventy-five kilograms of you, which isn't really a fair matchup in the first place. However, Sawamura takes defeat with grace, relaxing into place under you. With half of Sawamura under the kotatsu with you, it's warmer now, comfortably so, and you feel your eyelids get heavier.

"Are you sleeping?" Sawamura asks after a while, reaching a hand down to prod at you.

"I might be," you answer, eyes fully shut, soaking in the calm of the room.

"You're really like a cat, aren't you?" Sawamura laughs, deep and rich, and it lingers warm in your ears long after he goes quiet.

It's too quiet and you ease yourself out from under the kotatsu to see Sawamura slumped over the table, his head propped against his arm as he dozes. Today is the day he was scheduled to return from Miyagi and you hadn't really been expecting him to come over. From the looks of things, he had only stopped by his apartment to drop his things off before making the trip over to your place in the freezing wind and snow. It's no wonder he passed out at the first opportunity he got.

You get to your feet, walking around the kotatsu to where Sawamura is. It would be no easy feat getting him over to a more comfortable place like the sofa without waking him and so you settle for tucking one of your many blankets around him.

\---

"Daichi," you say one day in the middle of a practice match, completely by accident, and it rolls off your tongue like something you've known all your life.

The ball sails straight into Sawamura's face as he halts mid-run and you wince as his head snaps back from the impact. The whistle blows and you go to his side, taking his hand away from his face to inspect the damage. There is a growing red mark smack in the centre of his forehead and his face is flushed, even more than usual considering that you're in the middle of a practice match.

"Sorry!" you hear your teammate call out from the other side of the net.

"It's alright. I'm fine," Sawamura replies, but he isn't looking straight at you and that concerns you.

"Coach!" you call out and the coach motions for you to go. You pull Sawamura off the court, leading him out of the gym in search of the infirmary.

"Kuroo, I'm fine," he insists, even as he lets you pull him around.

"It hit your head. What if you get a concussion?" you tell him. "Anyway, you should have been able to get that. Why were you spacing out?"

Resistance drags at the end of your arm and you turn to look back at Sawamura, who has slowed down all of a sudden. He's looking down at the floor as he says, "It's nothing."

That sets off an alarm in you because you've known Sawamura Daichi personally for close to a year now and he is never evasive. Cunning sometimes, in ways people who don't know him don't expect—it's a skill that comes with captaincy—but other than that he's the most straightforward person you know.

"It's something," you say. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," Sawamura says for the third time that day, even though he seems anything but fine. There's uncertainty in his voice and in the way his hand clasps the back of his neck as he continues, "It's just that, you called me Daichi just now."

So you did, now that you think about it. Usually here is where you would throw out a smartass comment like _"Well, that's your name, isn't it?"_ but there's something off about Sawamura that makes you hold that back. There's an odd tension in the air now, prickling at your skin, and it makes you nervous for some reason.

You swallow, acutely aware of how dry the inside of your mouth suddenly feels. "I'm sorry. Did that bother you?"

"No, I don't mind," Sawamura says and he finally looks up, at you.

When you look back at Sawamura, with his eyes bright, face flushed, and a growing bruise smack in the middle of his forehead, all the thoughts idling at the back of your head finally come together, forming a single realisation that rises above everything else.

_Oh._

\---

Sawamura Daichi likes you.

When did that happen?

It's after practice and you're waiting for Sawamura to come out of the showers so that you can walk back together. Maybe have supper together like you always do.

You're not very sure what to do, to be honest.

This is the sort of information that people in your situation are never meant to have. Logically, you know that you are to do the polite thing and pretend you know absolutely nothing about this, but the thing about emotions is that they are never that simple.

"Hey, how's the head?" you call out as soon as Sawamura steps into the locker room.

"Kind of sore, but otherwise fine," Sawamura replies easily, throwing his things into his bag. You stand and he follows, the both of you heading for the door. All according to routine so far. God bless routine.

Sawamura and you lapse into silence as you walk down the street, pitch-black apart from the lampposts lining the road. It's a comfortable sort of silence, not a trace of awkwardness between the both of you, which is a relief.

"So," Sawamura breaks the silence first, his voice rising above your muffled footsteps. "What was that about just now? You calling me Daichi?"

Your heart leaps right into your throat because whoa, Sawamura does not hold back. You throw a glance his way, subtly, but it's sort of hard to make out his face in the shadows.

"Well," you answer carefully, "that's your name, isn't it? Anyway, it's two whole syllables less to say than 'Sawamura'."

"That makes sense," Sawamura replies slowly.

"You can call me Tetsurou too, you know," slips right out of your mouth before you realise it. The problem with falling into casual banter with Sawamura is that it comes too easy to you. Routines, especially those built up over half a year of close contact, are hard to break. Damn routines.

There is a fraction of a second where silence falls before Sawamura says, "Thanks, but no thanks. It's one syllable more to say."

You round a corner, your feet following a familiar path right up to your favourite eatery. The light from the shopfront splays across the both of you, illuminating Sawamura's face briefly before he turns it away from you. It's a subtle move, one you would have missed if all your senses hadn't been honed in on Sawamura in that moment.

Of course, you do the polite thing and pretend that you didn't see anything. And if you whip your head away a bit too quickly, your neck twisting painfully in the process, it's definitely because of the light.

\---

"Hey Kuroo, can I talk to you about something?"

"Sure." You spin away from your desk and the pages and pages of text due for class, thankful for the distraction.

The last time you checked, Daichi had been lying stomach-down on your floor, his head pillowed on his arms and his eyes glued to his laptop screen. Now, he's sitting upright with his laptop tucked away behind him. He looks nervous, just slightly, but it's enough to make you nervous too.

"What's up?" you ask, casually enough.

"You know that I'm going back to Miyagi over summer break," Daichi starts, his voice steady, cautious, like he's practiced this countless times before, "and I was wondering if you would like to come with me."

"Sure."

Daichi blinks. "What, really?"

"Hey, you were the one who asked," you say, mock-offended.

"I thought you'd want to think about it first," Daichi says. "Maybe ask your parents or something."

"Do you want me to _not_ go?" you ask, half-teasing, half-genuinely curious. Despite yourself, it's fascinating to see Daichi talk himself into circles when he's normally so well put together. Endearing even.

"What?" Daichi says quickly. "No."

"Then?" You shrug. "I'm going. It'll be good to see what Karasuno has been up to. Maybe update Nekoma on any new plays."

"Not like Hinata doesn't already tell Kozume everything." Daichi mutters.

"True. Last I heard, they were threatening to filter his messages to Kenma."

"If you know that much then it's a lost cause."

You chortle, turning away from Daichi in one quick move. Behind, you hear rustling as he returns back into position on the floor.

Daichi was right. You probably should have thought about it a bit more. But you hadn't really seen any reason to. It's been almost a year since you met in that one class and you've become so comfortable in his presence that it feels weird not to have him by your side for extended periods of time. It's strange because back when you met him for the first time in Miyagi it never occurred to you that you'd become such good friends.

So what if his feelings for you fell on the deep side of like? If you pulled away now, it'd just throw the whole dynamic between you into jeopardy. It'd be _awkward_ and you wouldn't be able to have moments like this, now, when you're both cooped up in a single room, with the heat of early summer at your backs as you try to finish your final papers for the semester.

You wouldn't risk all this. Never.

\---

But he would.

You should have seen this coming.

"Kuroo, can I talk to you about something?"

There is a hand on your arm pulling you aside, leading you away from the path back to Daichi's house and onto the wild grass on either side of it. Uncharted territory, you had joked about it when you first arrived in Miyagi. Sometimes you really need to keep your mouth shut.

"What's this about?" you say nonchalantly, like your heart isn't going at a mile a minute in your chest, threatening to leap out of your mouth if you don't get out of there right now.

You know what's coming, but you don't know what to do. They don't teach things like this in school, courses on what to do when your rival turned teammate turned friend likes you more than all of these relationships combined would entail. You've handled confessions from girls in high school and some in university, but you've never been faced with someone like Daichi.

Understandably, you're maybe, sort of, scared. You can't imagine what he must be feeling.

But Sawamura Daichi has always been brave.

He's soft, fumbling in his words as he lets go of your arm, stepping away to look you in the eye, only that his gaze keeps slipping, his voice is trembling, and, oh, he's so vulnerable now.

"I think I like you, Kuroo," he reaches at last and his eyes meet yours, staying their course this time as he waits for your response.

And then you're fumbling in your words and you don't know what you're saying but Daichi's face scrunches up and it hurts you to see him like that because for as long as you've known him, Daichi has always been about strength and courage and all things good about this world and you've just taken that away from him.

He nods, his gaze dropping to the ground, and then he's turning away from you. "Sorry, I'll..." You hear a sharp intake of breath, cut off abruptly before it fully forms. When he speaks again, his voice is pulled so tight it sounds like it might snap at any time. "I'll see you later back at home."

He walks away from you, slow and controlled, the way clouds are right before it starts to rain, before he breaks into a run right at the edges of your vision.

"Shit," you murmur, running a hand through your hair, the very same bedhead Daichi had just teased you about this morning. " _Shit._ "

You really didn't mean to say the things you did, or for things to turn out this way. You never meant to hurt him.

\---

"Kenma."

"Kuroo?"

"Kenma, I fucked up."

"Kuroo, it's three in the morning."

"Not like it matters, I know that you were probably up playing MonHun or something." You frown. "There's morning practice tomorrow, isn't there?"

A soft sigh filters through the receiver and you hear clacking as Kenma puts down his console. "What happened?"

"I, uh, got a confession." You swallow. "From Daichi."

There's silence from the other side for a while before Kenma says, "So?"

"So?" you repeat, tethering between calm and hysteria.

"I thought you'd be happier about this."

"Happier? What, why?"

Kenma goes quiet and you wish you were having this conversation in person, rather than on the phone, but you've just returned from Miyagi and nobody in the Kozume family would be too impressed about you barging in now at this time of the night.

"Kenma," you press him again when the silence stretches on for long enough to be disconcerting.

"I thought that you liked him too."

" _What?_ "

"Kuroo, have you ever heard yourself when you talk about Sawamura?"

"No, of course not," you say defensively. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Whenever you talk about Sawamura, you just kind of... light up. It's kind of gross seeing you like that actually and I don't want to elaborate on it so could you just take the hint?"

"So you're saying," you say slowly, your brain working way below normal processing speed as you try to wrap your head around Kenma's words, "that I like Daichi."

"Yes."

"I might need to sleep on that," you say faintly.

"Go to sleep, Kuroo," Kenma says and then he adds, like an afterthought, "I'll come over in the morning."

"Don't you have practice in the morning?"

"That was today." The line goes dead.

You stare incredulously at your phone, wondering where you went wrong with raising Kenma because he gets sassier every time you talk to him. Still, you appreciate that he's always been there for you, even if he tries not to show it.

Even though you've just hopped off the train, you don't feel tired at all. When you lie back on your bed, freshly out of the shower and ready to call it a night, sleep doesn't come to you. Instead, what happens in your head is a continuous loop of the events that happened less than twenty-four hours ago.

You remember that it had been evening and the sky had been a beautiful sunset backdrop against Daichi's silhouette when you held his heart in your hands and broke it even without meaning to. You never meant to hurt him like that, but the thing is that you spent so much time pretending you didn't notice what he felt for you, trying to keep things normal between the both of you, that you forgot it wasn't only you who got to decide these things.

You weren't prepared at all for what happened and this had happened. As you told Kenma, as you told yourself so many times on the train back to Tokyo, you fucked up.

You groan, tossing your phone away from you and hearing it land somewhere around the foot of your bed. It's only been less than a day since you left Miyagi and you're already missing Daichi. You haven't contacted him since then and he hasn't contacted you since then and there's this fear building up inside of you that you're never going to hear from him ever again and that would be the end of it. You wouldn't blame him for that, not after your spectacular fuck up.

But.

You don't want that to happen.

See, the thing about denial is that if done right, it overpowers everything related to the subject matter. Everything, including your own thoughts and feelings related to one Sawamura Daichi and this thing called "like". Now that you've messed up your life _and_ Daichi's life, denial just doesn't work anymore and it gives you free rein to consider certain things that you hadn't stopped to think about previously.

In other words, it is only after Daichi had been long gone that you realise that maybe these feelings between the both of you weren't only a one-way street.

\---

"You look like you didn't sleep at all," Kenma observes from where he is, perched on your desk chair with his knees up to his chest. His phone is in his hand, but the screen is dark for once.

"I didn't. I _can't_ ," you grit out, frustrated. You sit up in bed, shoving aside the bedsheets tangled all around you. You don't need a mirror to know that your hair is doing its anti-gravity shtick again, after an entire night of tossing and turning and never actually getting any sleep.

"So did you think about it?"

"Yeah, like a whole night's worth of it."

"And?"

"I don't know what to do," you admit.

"Kuroo," Kenma says quietly, his voice taking on a serious edge that makes you look up. "Do you like Sawamura?"

You hesitate.

You've probably always known the answer to that question, even though you've never really wanted to admit it. You aren't as brave as Daichi to go for the things you want without being scared of losing everything. But now you're on the verge of losing him anyway. It's like the floor is crumbling beneath your feet and it doesn't really matter if you take another step forward because either way you're going to have to let yourself fall.

"Kuroo," Kenma says again, his words resonating sharply with the words in your head. "Why don't you try saying yes to him?"

\---

It's been three weeks since you've last spoken to Daichi. He isn't answering your phone calls and a last desperate attempt to contact him through Kenma had resulted in a complete shutdown from the Karasuno side. You're not sure if this means Karasuno has started enforcing their ban on Karasuno-Nekoma communications between Hinata and Kenma or if the whole team is in on trying to keep you away from Daichi. Either way, it isn't helping and this means your only chance of talking to Daichi, other than a train ride back to Miyagi, is when he comes back for the new semester.

On the day Daichi is scheduled to return, you wait for him at the station after double-checking and triple-checking the train times. You know which exit he'll take, given that he isn't trying to avoid you after all this while (please god no), but just in case, Kenma is waiting by the other exit, and Yaku by another, and basically you're going to owe the whole of the Nekoma volleyball team so much after today.

At three o'clock sharp, the crowd flooding through the exit swells, which is your cue to keep an eye out for Daichi. With looks like his, brown eyes and black hair, he is easy to lose in a crowd, but you've always been able to pick him out so easily from everyone else.

When you see him, your body starts moving out of pure instinct and then you're cutting through the sea of people, using your height and shoulders to your advantage, your hand outstretched to catch him by the arm. Daichi turns, startled, and it's like that day back in the lecture hall all over again when you saw him for the first time in forever, only that he isn't smiling now.

"Kuroo?" he says, but it comes out flat and dull and it's all wrong from how he used to say your name.

"I'm going to need to borrow you for a while," is all the warning he gets before you start pulling him out of the crowd. To your relief, he doesn't fight you, doesn't try to pull away, following right behind you in silence.

There aren't many places in Tokyo that suit your need but you manage, finding a park somewhere between the station and school. It's the start of autumn, which means that the leaves crunch underfoot, sunset colours surrounding the both of you as you head right for the cluster of trees in a far corner.

"What do you want, Kuroo?" Daichi says, his face carefully blank, his posture stiff and guarded, when you finally come to a stop.

He still hasn't tried to take his hand away and it remains there in yours as you take a deep breath and say, "I'm sorry."

Daichi flinches and you feel that tremor travel all the way up your arm. Still, you press on, "And I hope you haven't given up on me. I was being stupid and I knew that you liked me long before you told me, but I was too busy being an absolute butthead to realise that" —you tighten your grip on his hand. For courage, you think— "I like you too, Daichi."

Daichi tries to pull away, his eyes going wide in his face, but you hang on, somewhat desperately. You're not going to let him go again like the last time.

"If you're saying this because you feel sorry for me—" Daichi starts, heated, and you can see the hurt resurfacing in his eyes.

"I'm not," you cut in, pulling him closer. "I'm serious about this, Daichi. I mean I'll get it if you tell me to get lost after" —your heart lurches— "after what happened in Miyagi, but I just want you to know that I like you too and that I'm so sorry for taking so long to realise it."

His eyes find yours, searching, and you hold his gaze for as long as it takes for him to calm down, watching a whole slew of emotions cross his face.

"Am I too late?" you ask, your heart sinking slowly. You're ready to drop Daichi's hand when he comes to life again and suddenly he's the one holding on to you instead.

"You're impossible, you know that, Kuroo?" he huffs out, sounding a lot more like the Daichi you're used to. "You better keep a firm grip on me because I'll definitely punch you if you let go now."

Out of self-preservation, you tighten your grip on Daichi and he bursts into laughter, bending over at the stomach and clutching at your shoulder with his free hand. When he resurfaces, his laughter is fading and even though there's a smile on his face, his eyes are over-bright when he looks up at you.

"You're lucky that I still like you, even though you can be incredibly dense for someone so smart," he tells you. "I tried letting you go, you know, during these past weeks and I thought I managed it but then you showed up and pulled this stupid stunt with me."

Oh. "I'm sorry." _Thank god._

"You better be." Daichi leans up, his hand cradling your jaw, his touch tentative like he still can't believe what's happening.

And that's when you realise: he's the boy you should have kissed in summer. But it's okay, because you're here now and he's here now and it's not too late for this to happen between the both of you.

"I'll make it up to you. I promise," you murmur, leaning into his touch.

Daichi smiles, bright and lovely, and you wonder how you could have been so stupid about everything in the first place.

You see, the thing is that people who are full of love are also full of light. You don't know how you never noticed this, but when you look at Daichi now it hits you that maybe you've always liked him a little bit, even before your time in university. There's a reason why he always stood out so vividly, like he was the only one who mattered in a street full of people. And maybe he's always liked you a little bit too, from the very first time he met you, and the same theory works in reverse for him. You're not sure where the attraction between the both of you begins and ends, but when you close the distance between him and you, you find that it doesn't really matter anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> My kurodai feelings kind of ran away with me on this so I'm just gonna leave... for... a while... (this fic is really just a pile of mushy feelings b ye)
> 
> How do people feel about second person POV btw? Because I like writing it occasionally but I think most people prefer not to read it? Personally my fav POV for fics is third person.
> 
> Also a reminder that you can find me on my [tumblr](http://kythen.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/catcrowcalls). Come say hi or talk kurodai/haikyuu to me!


End file.
